Thursday, December 7, 2017

Staunton, December 7 – The Russian
government claims that Russians have reduced their alcohol consumption by
almost 30 percent over the last decade, but in fact, while they may be drinking
less legal alcohol, they are increasingly turning to cheaper and more dangerous
surrogates that are now killing more than 40,000 people a year.

If those figures are correct, they certainly
mean that Russians are consuming nearly twice as much alcohol as the Russian
government acknowledges and they almost certainly mean that Russians, hurt by
the economic crisis, are now buying cheaper surrogates than more expensive
registered hard liquor.

According to Rosstat, Russians
consumed far less alcohol this year than ten years ago. In 2007, they consumed
9.4 liters of pure alcohol, above the eight liter limit for healthy living set
by the World Health Organization; but this year, they drank only 6.6 liters of
pure alcohol. That would be a significant improvement if it were true.

But
there are good reasons to think Russians’ turn to surrogates has more than
wiped out that improvement and indeed have made the situation even worse.For example, the number of Russians arrested
in a drunken condition while committing crimes jumped from 302,000 cases in 2006
to 440,000 in 2016.

Moreover,
rising prices and rising taxes on officially registered vodka and hard forms of
hard liquor have made them relatively more expensive than many surrogates, like
perfume and medications, 20 percent of which in Russia are now estimated to be
purchased by those who seek intoxication (rbc.ru/investigation/business/24/11/2016/5836fabd9a7947f82e05d12b).